Roosevelt Quotes

“And because he lacked the initiative, and was assuming the imperfect moral stand of condemning Hitlerism as utterly evil and bent on world domination without openly and totally combating it, he faced a thicket of secondary but irksome troubles.”
― James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom

“Many unions discriminated against them, in part because of their fear that if Negroes came in, white workers might well go out. The future looked no more encouraging; in December 1940 less than 2 per cent of the trainees under defense pre-employment and refresher courses were black. Negroes could”
― James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom

“mobilization of manpower, he promptly asked Congress for the measure not only on the ground of mobilization but also to assure the fighting men that the nation was making its total effort and to warn the enemy that he could not get a negotiated peace. The President also asked Congress for legislation to use the services of the four million 4-F’s. The President’s budget for fiscal 1946 proposed only a moderate decline from the prodigious spending of 1945—a clear indication of the administration’s expectation of a long, hard war against Japan. The President’s message on the state of the union ran to 9,000 words; it was the longest such message he had ever sent Congress. It was as though he wanted a culminating speech that would cover all that he”
― James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom

“Politics seemed to have fallen to a new wartime low of spite and pettiness.”
― James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom